and im not sure exactly what to do next, particularly on my google plus account.

I am a chiropractor, but my business is different. I do more nutrition consulting, so i can work with people at my home, at their home, or at a coffee shop. I will be doing my marketing online through adwords and hopefully rank for some keywords.

I am also building a resource on a domain i own to provide referral to other chiropractors in naples florida. Im building it out and will just leave it there until i sell it or maybe open back up in naples. www.chiropractornaplesflorida.com

My main business will be online. And conducted online.

So what should i do with my google plus page that has sat there for 2 years at the address of my former employer. Move address, make it a brand?

Re: Question- Slightly different business structure.

Sorry to hear about the business troubles, but at least it sounds like you're on a new track now. Let's see if we can't get you squared up with the right direction from here.

It sounds to me like there's two business assets you're asking about. The first is www.chiropractornaplesflorida.com. That's just a website you'd be trying to get to rank organically, and couldn't have it's own GMB profile, so that website is just a thing you'd be working on by itself, and as far as Google is concerned, isn't particularly related to your local business.

The second piece, is your own consulting business. Even when you move it online, you'd still be looking to meet with people in person, right? If that's the case, then you're allowed to have a GMB profile. Even though you see customers at your home, presumably you'd be seeing them by appointment only (as opposed to taking walkins off the street during stated business hours) so you'd need to have your location hidden. You'll be leaving the "I also serve customers at my business location" unchecked, since it'd be by appointment only.

On the other hand, if I misunderstood you and you're looking to primarily get into Skype consulting with clients in other states or cities, then you would no longer be entitled to a local business page. You could have a brand page of course, but brand pages don't get reviews, so you'd be losing those reviews.

It looks like your profile is verified, hopefully you're the one that has access to it. What you'll want to do is set your address to hidden (like I linked to above) and change your address to your home. You'll also probably want to go through and clean up your address in other important places around the internet (Yelp, Facebook, etc). You can see which places have your old address with a simple Google search. Google pays attention to all the information about your business on the internet, and if you have one address some places and another address other places, it can lower Google's trust in the information they have on you, and lowers the chances that they'll show you. I have no idea if that'll affect adwords bid prices this... if you're primarily expecting leads through adwords, doing all that cleanup might be less important, but don't quote me on that.

Also for your own expectations, if you've worked with adwords before but it's been a while, about two or three months ago they got rid of all the ads along the side, now it's just (usually) 4 ads up top and some ads down below. I don't do much with adwords myself, but you may find the competition and bid prices higher than you remember. Facebook's ended up being a viable PPC platform too, and might be worth considering if adwords ends up being too challenging. For either one though, if you don't have some marketing chops you might want to seek out some help, there can be a steep and expensive learning curve if you're not used to direct response advertising.

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Re: Question- Slightly different business structure.

JAmes thank you for the through answer. Ive never bought adwords. I have acct and have set up campaigns. I realize i likely need to get someone involved as that is a science, it seems.

The "hidden" option was not in that vernacular. It said something to the effect of "delivery of goods.." I choose that option and not the second option, which I believe was about receiving customers, though im pretty tired and it may have agreed to give away my dog. not sure exactly.

Re: Question- Slightly different business structure.

Hm... maybe you didn't save after making the changes or something, on your profile your full address is still showing. If you mark your business as hidden (with those two options you mentioned, deliver goods and services at their location and you don't serve customers at your location) then your profile should only say you're at Naples, FL 34102‎, instead of listing the whole address. When you click on the map, it'll also show a red radius to show the area you selected that you serve.

As a side note, the radius you select doesn't really influence where you'll actually rank, and setting it too high can actually hurt your chances of showing even in your home city. Don't set your radius higher than 40 miles, I usually set it for 20 or something.

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Re: Question- Slightly different business structure.

Thank you james.I was wondering about the radius, and perceived over reaching. I will be running campaigns throughout florida, assuming i can find low cost keywords. Thus the reason i wanted to indicate entire state. But i dont want to over reach and get knocked. Thank you for your input.

I do have possession of this account and i am re verifying now bc of address change.Is there and actual hidden button? I only see the option to check. deliver goods or storefront.

Regarding the website. I was going to have 2 websites linked in the google plus account.

The chiropractornaplesflorida.com is what i am hoping to get ranked in google by using best practices of SEO. IT has high target keywords, 500 searched per month that phrase. I assume by optimizing outbound links, better content than competitors, and satiating the need of visitors it will rank sooner than a domain with 0 history.. This will be linking out to about 10 other chiropractirs, which i thought was a decent seo strategy based on the assumptions on the hummingbird updates.

Re: Question- Slightly different business structure.

I work with are largely in and around my former office (30 miles south). This is where paid marketing will focus.

I wonder if I should have set a radius around that location.

I have not entered the code to re-validate my new address which is 30 miles north.Can I stop the new address validation process and simply put a radius around my former office, or have i now lost that since i requested a change of address.

The system is prompting me for the code. Im not sure what to do. Any thoughts?

Re: Question- Slightly different business structure.

If you've already requested a change of address, you'll need to follow through with it. Even aside from that, it's against TOS to maintain a listing at an address you no longer reside at, you're 'supposed' to update it, though I'm sure there's a lot of business owners that have thought the same way you are and just left it.

For what it's worth, even if your address is hidden, your location is still a huge part of decides who you appear to in the results. The radius you set doesn't really impact rankings much as far as I've seen, aside from negatively impacting rankings if you set the radius too high. Best to follow through with the address change, and consider either making local landing pages to rank organically for other keywords, or exploring paid advertising if you want to get business too far away from where you're physically located.

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Re: Question- Slightly different business structure.

Exactly. The number I've seen is about 40 for what you can set your radius to without running into any ranking penalties, but whether you set the radius to 30 or 40 or whatever else, it likely won't help you rank that far away from where your home base is. You can see yourself, drive across the city and do a few searches for plumbers or locksmiths. Even though all the businesses in those categories will come to you, Google still serves up results heavily influenced by where those businesses actually are located, and you'll see the results you get change dramatically every 5 miles you travel.

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